To Calgary Stampeders offensive lineman Obby Khan, it was a no-brainer.

TORONTO -- David Braley has a cellphone now, but he didn't buy it. Telus gave it to him for free and he carries it around, but he only really uses it to avoid the exorbitant charges you can get in hotels for local calls.

He has an email account too, after junking his old one nine years ago. Asked about it, he says, "I have it in a hidden location."

When you ask if he prefers to be called "Senator," he says no, no, he's David everywhere but in Ottawa.

David Braley is a man who does things the old-fashioned way, when possible. It got him this far.

As Grey Cup week attempts to grab hold of the city of Toronto, David Braley looms over it, as he does every year. He owns the Toronto Argonauts, for one thing; and had the B.C. Lions not lost in the West final, this would be the Braley Bowl.

Some people would say it made the league look small.

But every Grey Cup is a sort of Braley Bowl, really, since the fact there is a Canadian Football League at all is a credit to the shrewd, set-your-watch-by-his-haircut entrepreneurial savant from Hamilton.

When asked which of the current teams he has never helped out financially, sometimes without the knowledge of the commissioner, he demurs, then hums. "Let me think," he says, "across the league ... there's one. Edmonton was always well-managed."

The rest, though -- well, he has owned three teams and helped out four more. When he was eight or nine years old, a neighbour came over with an extra ticket for a Tiger-Cats game; when he was 12, he rode his bike two hours for a Hal Patterson autograph signing at the Holland Chev Olds car dealership. He played football, loved football. He was hooked.

That he became one of the country's most relentless businessmen, a master of the angles -- his net worth is said to awe his fellow CFL owners, though you would never know it by the everyman's wardrobe -- meant he could become the league's saviour when he was needed ... and he was.

In 1996, B.C. was in receivership and Montreal and Ottawa were in bankruptcy. An unnamed political friend of Braley's warned him that without Vancouver, the CFL would lose its TV contract with the CBC. The CFL had wobbled before; this time, it wobbled near the chasm.

So, Braley bought the Lions, Robert Wetenhall bought Montreal, TSN offered a contract that included a signing bonus and here he is, watching both the forest and the trees.

The stories of his budgetary acumen and photographic memory are legend -- as Argonauts vice-president David Bedford puts it, "I mean, he'll call me and say, why did you spend this $49 and every now and then you kind of go, David, why are you worrying about that one? But that's what his success is. I have no idea how he does it."

That money is going somewhere. Braley has poured tens of millions back into Hamilton, into the arts and more than anything, hospitals and McMaster's medical school.

He owns one car, a four-year-old Cadillac, and his wife owns a smaller one. They live well. But opulence? No, thanks.

"I got enough," he says. "No, I'm pretty ... frugal's not the right word, but I'm careful with how I spend my money and then I spend it cost-effectively."

When asked what's left to do, he says he wants to give away more money, in Hamilton, mostly.

He is a keen student of the future; ask him why he started donating significant amounts to stem cell research five years ago and Braley launches into a specific discussion of the future of medicine, of how stem cells work, of how they discovered how to make blood with them at McMaster, patents pending.

When he started funding stem cell research, the conservative Braley got some blowback. He ignored it.

"I had letters from various people in the Catholic Church, even on high," says Braley. "And I just said that I believe in this."

The future is coming in other ways, too. He won't be the heart of the CFL forever. He told B.C. he would sell the team by the time he's 75 and he's 71 now.

He says that if he turns the Argonauts into a break-even operation, he'll sell them, too.

It is pointed out the league would probably beg him to stay and that he could stay as long as he liked. He laughs.

"If they don't mind, I'll help them, I'll work with them, I'll do whatever they need, OK?" he says. "But the bottom line is, I've been doing it for 25 years. So they should move on, just like (longtime Edmonton executive) Huey Campbell and the rest of us.

"Your time comes to an end at some point. No, I don't have to if I don't want to. But it's best to have a new owner and it's important to put the right owner in the spot, who will have the same passion and manage it properly.

"(In Vancouver), seven or eight people have shown interest. The key is, the right person.

"That's the key, that you're trusted with something that you don't own, that really belongs to the local community. So, you make sure you move it into the correct hands when the time comes, so that you don't have these problems of someone throwing the keys on the table and walking away."

Braley is scanning the horizon now, looking to ensure all the work he's done won't be wasted.

He wants to make sure this little league doesn't wobble again, without its most stable pillar.

He is asked if he has lost money over the years on the CFL, and says, "Truthfully, I did, but that's fine. But I've got most of it back with the B.C. operation."

The 100th Grey Cup, of course, will help, too.

That being said, when asked how the ledger will look at the end of his long history of saving the hard cases and propping up the unsteady ones, Braley knows the bottom line. He always knows the bottom line.

"What, everything? After I sell the teams and everything? Absolutely, I'll be substantially ahead. Who would have thought that years ago? It worked."

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.